The weeklong meeting here is expected to result in, among other things, ICANN's granting of additional top-level domains to ease the overcrowding in the dot-com world.

The glut of dot-coms in part compelled ICANN, in late 1999, to create the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Process to quickly resolve the most egregious cases of cybersquatting. Since then, trademark owners have used the procedure to get ownership of disputed domains in fully 80 percent of decided UDRP cases.

Every person or company who buys a domain name agrees to be bound by the terms of the UDRP as part of their registration agreement. But critics contend it is time to revisit the policy. The say the UDRP has a built-in bias against domain name registrants because the procedure allows trademark holders -- and not domain owners -- to choose from a list of dispute resolution providers who make their dime by deciding cases.

"There is statistical evidence that selection of dispute resolution service providers by challengers leads to forum shopping that biases the results," wrote professor Milton Mueller of the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University.

"(The World Intellectual Property Organization and the National Arbitration Forum) are the most complainant-friendly providers and eResolutions is the most defendant friendly," Mueller wrote. "Both WIPO and NAF tend to interpret the UDRP in ways that favor trademark holders over other Internet users, whereas eResultions decisions tend to adhere more closely to the strict language of the policy."

This correlates with the fact that WIPO and NAF attract the largest number dispute resolution customers -- 61 percent and 31 percent -- while eResolutions only attracts 7 percent of cases, he wrote.

Mueller presented his paper on Sunday to a panel convened to discuss the UDRP.

"I think that's a result of competition in services provided and not just a statistical analysis," said Francis Gurry, WIPO's legal counsel. "There have been some bad cases but, by and large, the majority of cases have been properly decided."

Gurry said WIPO's reputation within the intellectual property community may make complainants "more comfortable" and that it nabs many international cases because its arbitration panelists speak multiple languages, a position supported in Mueller's paper.

But eResolutions founder Ethan Katsch said that for a trademark holder, the choice is simple when the options are a dispute resolution provider who finds for the trademark holder 80 percent of the time or a provider who decides for the trademark holder half the time.

"It's almost a violation of legal ethics to advise a client to choose the provider that chooses the complainant 50 percent of the time," he said.

Also on the panel was ICANN general counsel Louis Touton, who said the issue of forum shopping was contemplated at the time the UDRP was created.

"Forum shopping is clearly a problem and if it is occurring it suggests that justice is being bought and sold," he said.

One way the policy compensates for this problem, he said, is by allowing defendants the option of paying cash to go to a three-member arbitration panel. The defendants and the trademark holder can then choose individual panelists from any ICANN-accredited dispute resolution provider. Few people, however, have elected this option, he said.

Mueller's paper proposes a number of solutions to the problem of forum shopping bias in the UDRP. Adding an appeals process or employing random selection dispute resolution are two options, he wrote.

Mueller's paper also noted that trademark holders are using the UDRP to challenge domains that have been registered and in use for a very long time. He noted that magic.com -- a domain name registered in 1989 -- was recently challenged by a company whose trademark was not registered until years later.

"The ability of trademark holders to challenge names that predate their own trademark use or registration raises disturbing issues," he wrote. "It is inimical to Internet stability -- one of ICANN's prime directives -- to encourage challenges to long-held and (long-)used domain names."

There was one point on which most of the panelists agreed: that the UDRP has been inconsistently applied to "sucks" cases, or cases in which trademarked terms are used in domain names as part of criticism sites.

"They have found that guinness-really-sucks.com is identical and confusingly similar to Guineas," Mueller said. "This is one of those areas in which there is no consistency."

WIPO's Gurry agreed. He pointed out, however, jurisdictional issues make it difficult to craft an international dispute resolution procedure. "While I stand in full admiration of the First Amendment, it does not apply all over the world," he said.